Matt’s Journal

New Theme

Posted by Matt under General

Installed it today and tweaked the hell out of it to look nice and display how I wanted it.

What do you think? Leave a comment

The Best Wordpress Plugins You Don’t Know About

Posted by Matt under Blogging, General, Internet

There are thousands of lists of what bloggers deem to be the best plugins for the Wordpress blogging platform. My aim here today is to throw you a few that you haven’t heard of but may be interested in using. So here goes…

1. DoFollow

DoFollow is a plugin designed to spread joy amongst bloggers by spreading the link love to your readers. 99% of you have the Askimet SPAM plugin installed, so why not reward the people who do comment on your blog buy allowing Googlebot and his friends to crawl to their sites also?

2. Tiger Style Administration

You’ve been blogging for years using Wordpress and you still cant work out why the team haven’t made the Admin interface a little easier on the eye. This new style from Ordered List replaces the bog-standard layout with one that is not only a lot sexier but it actually makes the navigation easier to master.

3. WP-Postratings

You can see this plugin doing it’s thing on this very post. It adds a tasty looking ratings bar for you to give your feedback on an authors post.

4. WP-Slimstat

WP-Slimstat allows you to report on your blogs traffic from the comfort of your Admin Panel. Slimstat boasts:

• Liquid layout: optimized for 1024×768 and 800×600
• Metatags to show stats on your blog
• Fully localizable
• Improved browser and platform detection
• Tracks Wordpress search form
• Shows visitors and unique IPs, not just hits
• Uses of a local ip-to-country database

5. Google Sitemap Generator

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. It basically makes your blog more visible to the world and means you are indexed by all the major online search players.

That wraps it up for now, expect an updated one when Wordpress 2.3 has more compatible plugins.

UltraVNC: Remote Desktop To Your Home Computer

Posted by Matt under Tech

You’ve woken up in the morning, you turn on the computer and you fire up your torrent client to download all your favourite TV shows, films and music. You then head off to work smiling at the fact they will all be ready for viewing/listening when you return.

Trouble is, when you get home you find all the torrents are stuck on 3% because you used a dodgy tracker.

This is where UltraVNC comes into play. UltraVNC is “a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely.” [source]

This basically allows you to sort out those torrents from the comfort of your work, friends, family’s computer.

Setting It Up

• Head over to the UltraVNC site and download the setup file. Install the executable. This will save two shortcuts that you will need to use: UltraVNC Viewer and UltraVNC Server.
• As UltraVNC allows you to connect over the internet, you will have to allow permissions on your router and/or you firewall so other computers can access it. UltraVNC typically uses port 5900 for incoming connections, so trigger this port on your router ( a good guide can be found here) and your firewall.
• Fire up UltraVNC Server. you will be presented with a screen like the one below:

• So that you don’t have every tom, dick and harry connecting to your computer, give your UltraVNC Server a password in the VNC Password box. The rest of this can be left, so click “Apply” and then “OK”. Your server should now show on the right hand side of your taskbar next to your system clock. This means it is running.
• As you will be connecting to your computer from an external source, you need to know the computer’s IP Address. This is as easy as going to www.whatismyip.com and copying the set of numbers they display (for example - 85.234.123.111). Keep a note of these numbers, you will need it when you try to connect to your computer from your destination (I always email it to myself so I don’t forget).
• Once at your destination, you will need to install the same set of programs as you downloaded before on your home computer, but this time only using the UltraVNC Viewer. Fire that up, enter the IP address you had saved previously and you should be away!

After a little time setting it up, it becomes the easiest thing to do. You will never know how you lived without it! (talk about cliched!)

Signing up to Blogrush

Posted by Matt under Blogging, General

Firstly, you ask: “What is Blogrush?”.

Basically it’s a site that generates a widget for you blog that shows you whats popular on blogs similar to yours, it helps drive traffic to blogs on the interweb. It is completely free and will at random display five links for you to peruse and have a look at.

It also means that my blog posts will be visible on other websites that publish the very same widget.

I have added it to my sidebar to see how it works. Have a look and see how it works for you also.

Blogrush

Bioshock and Halo 3: Say Goodbye to Bedtime

Posted by Matt under Gaming

Bioshock, what a game. While it didn’t transcend the FPS genre, it certainly innovated where it could. The ability to combine “Plasmids” such as Telekinesis and Enrage (which could attract a far away object or cause an ememy to attack one of his own kind) with weapons, really made for a game that just flowed effortlessly. The level detail was staggering, being able to look out of Rapture’s thick glass walls and spot marine life aswell as the rest of the submerged city made you really feel like you were miles from home.

I have just finished this game, the sense of story really is paramount to this game as you learn about why Rapture was created, how it descended into ruin and how your part in the whole game is played. Finishing couldnt have come at a better time, seeing as I am due to receive the latest instalment in the Halo series; Halo 3.

Halo 2 was mauled by critics because of it’s cliffhanging ending and it’s one-dimensional single player. It did however take multiplayer gaming to a whole new level. Halo 3 has been created for the Xbox360, making it the first in the Halo series to be specifically for a next-gen console. I was fortunate enough to get a beta-invite for the game when I purchased Crackdown, new weapons, new options and significantly different physics showed millions of us what we were to expect when the 26th of September roles around.

4 Player Cooperative inside Single Player mode, Saved Films (a complete recording of your multiplayer match) and much more, looks for an exciting few days without any sleep

6V Battery Hack

Posted by Matt under Funny, Tech

Tired of paying £5 for a pack of 4 AA batteries? Why not hack a 6V battery and reap the rewards?!